Introduction: On Why & What

Pouring from a page
Running through the air, words are
Water for my soul
-Myself (R. M. Boston)

What then is the good of... occupying our hearts with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feelings which we should try to avoid having in our own person?  Or fixing our inner eye earnestly on things that can never exist...?  The nearest I have yet to got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being.  We want to be more than ourselves....  We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own....  We demand windows.
-C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism¹


It has been said to me that one should avoid beginning an article of one's own writing by quoting someone else's.  However, I cannot remember the reason why.  If it is to keep from making your own writing appear inferior, then I am fully willing to admit Mr. Lewis my superior and move on.  That said, I do wonder if the principle counts considering I placed some of my own words before Lewis's.  Well, whatever the case, the reason I began this first post with that amateur poem of mine and that famous quote from C. S. Lewis is to lead into a point: why I began this blog.

Words are precious to me.  They are like water to my mind and soul, and the creative and skilled use of words in the form of fiction is like a clear spring or lake in the desert of life in which I can immerse myself, or like raindrops drumming against the window, a sound pleasing to my ears and both (paradoxically) relaxing and stimulating to my mind.  Even when the overall experience turns out unpleasant, as if being caught in a storm without shelter, I would not wish to live without words, without stories, without reading and writing, listening and speaking stories.  Or, to put it in Lewis's terms, I would not wish to live without windows.

What's more, I seem unable to prevent my thoughts on stories from spilling out.  As the recipients of my letters, and my family, might have noticed, it has recently become increasingly difficult for me to keep my thoughts on the matter of story to myself.  Not only do I love reading stories, I love speaking about them.  Strange as it may seem after so much praise for the written word, I only realized this second love a few months ago when the nomadic poet in me (here today, gone for the next who-knows-how-long) penned the first draft of the poem at the start of this post.  I do not claim to be skilled at poetry, but writing those words was powerful to me.  For some time, the rain had been pouring and cracks forming; and at last I felt I did not want to just keep my thoughts to my letters and conversations.  There is only so much you can say before you need extra postage or must change the topic for the sake of avoiding the fall into one-sided rambling.  The river has flooded; the dam has broken.  The words refuse to be confined any longer.

I wish I could say I decided to start this blog because of some noble goal, such as bettering society or some other high concept, but that is simply not the truth: I began this blog because I want, perhaps even need, to talk about stories.  Nothing more.  If there is some "higher goal" to be found, it would be that I wish to provide my understanding of stories, the understanding of a single Christian with a Judeo-Christian worldview, and to recommend stories I enjoy, whether "Christian" or not, to others, though even that goal is probably too "low" for many of my fellow Christians.  Should my words, by the grace of God, indeed "help" someone, whatever you might mean by that word, then I shall of course be elated, but that is not the purpose of this blog.  I also am not attempting to shake the world with my "profound" insights or anything like that; I write because I love reading and writing and stories, and isn't it natural that what you love you usually wish to share?

Now that the "why" aspect of this blog is, hopefully, explained, I wish to cover the more technical side of this blog, the "what".  As stated above, this blog will be about stories, about the different windows I have looked through, the other eyes I've seen with.  Posts will be published once a week, probably on Monday or Tuesday, and will fall under one of three categories:

Reviews & Recommendations: (Mostly) spoiler-free looks at a story (usually a novel or novel series), looking at what I like or didn't like, such as story, writing style, characters, etc. and whether or not I recommend the story to others

Spoiler Shelf: A deeper investigation on one or more aspects of a book or series, comparing pieces to each other, etc. (will contain spoilers, of course)

Personal Musings: My thoughts on the various aspects of writing, the tools and conventions and elements of story

As you can see, I will not just be discussing books I have read, but the act of writing as well.  Stories are not just meant to be read; they are to be written.  As a fiction writer myself, I have read and thought much about the elements of writing and stories, and I do not think I can have a blog about my interaction with stories if I do not include speaking on the building blocks of the narratives as well.

Finally, I wish to address some of what this blog will not cover.  While this is a blog about stories, I will not cover mediums such as film, music, video games, poetry, and stage productions.  I will be focusing on prose fiction.  Please understand; I do not at all hold these other mediums to be inferior forms of storytelling.  In fact, one of my favorite stories ever is a Japanese graphic novel/animated tv show.  No, the reason I restrict myself to prose is simply because that is where my heart lies.  When it is fitting, I will refer to these other mediums, and maybe I shall sporadically do a post covering a story in one of these other mediums, but when it comes to the main content of this blog, I shall limit myself to prose narratives.

With the groundwork laid out, it's time to conclude this post.  Next week will be the first review, in which I shall talk about a novel I think illustrates well the approach to literature I wish to have and discuss on this blog.  Thank you for your time, and welcome to Water, Words, & Windows!


¹Lewis, C. S.  An Experiment in Criticism.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961.  Print.